


Orpheus Revisited

by immoral_crow



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Quests, References to Norse Religion & Lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-16
Updated: 2013-10-16
Packaged: 2017-12-29 14:46:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/immoral_crow/pseuds/immoral_crow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes a while after the Battle of New York for Clint to find out that Phil is dead. It takes him even longer to find out there is something he can do about this. Everything has a price though - Clint knows that, and there is very little he wouldn't do to give Phil a second chance at life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orpheus Revisited

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my lovely Nat and Shaded Sun who beta read this, and to Addy and Helen for encouraging me. All remaining mistakes are mine alone.

It takes a while after the Battle of New York for Clint to find out. 

It’s understandable. Phil is… was his handler. Nothing special – just the guy who keeps him informed, backed up and alive. No reason why anyone would think to tell Clint straight away. 

So when he hears it from Hill, he barely reacts. He nods, his jaw tight, and then walks off through the halls of the helicarrier holding his head high and pretending to see nothing (the looks on the faces of the agents he passes, the damage he inflicted), hear nothing (the whispered comments, the barely stifled sniggers), feel nothing (and where would you even begin with _that_?). 

He manages to hold it together until he is out, until he is home – or the nearest approximation he has anyway. 

It’s a fucking mess. Especially now when most of the block is still picking up the pieces the Chitauri left, but it’s his, it has a view (such as it is) and he can be alone there. 

He wonders how he is meant to respond to this. Should he get angry? Cry? Lose himself in drink, or sex, or drugs? He’s not sure. Instead he stays in the apartment and drinks cup after cup of coffee, until the bitterness has beaten its way into every cell of his body. It gives him something to do, something to focus on, and most importantly it helps him keep sleep at bay. 

So he sits; he drinks; he thinks. He guesses that this is mourning Coulson. Certainly he’s mourning the past. He’s now the only one alive who has memories of the jobs they did, the moments of closeness that grew through their time together. Sure, Natasha features large in later times, but it was Clint and Coulson for years before that. And now it’s just Clint, he finds himself trying to remember _everything_ lest it fade, and by fading have never existed at all. 

He supposes they were friends. He wishes he had realised that while Phil was still alive. He wishes he had realised a lot of things while he’d still had the chance. 

It feels like a responsibility – not to let Coulson fade from existence. If Clint is the only one who knows what Coulson looked like that time in Havana when he was suddenly _Phil_ , laughing, with his head thrown back and his eyes squinting against the setting sun, then Clint becomes important. He can’t act out any of those half-considered plans that he’d had when he’d realised just how efficient a weapon he had been for Loki. If Clint dies, Phil is lost, ergo Clint has to live. 

It’s this realisation that makes him leave the apartment, buy food, text Natasha, check in with SHIELD, and generally start to pick up the shards of his life again. And as he does, as he’s assimilated back into the real world of medical checks, the psych department, Tony fucking Stark and his crazy plans, he suddenly realises, properly, bone-deep _realises_ , what he’s lost. 

This, he thinks one evening on the range, when he’s shooting arrow after arrow to try and fill the empty place that has yawned open inside him, this must be what love feels like, and he’s not sure whether to laugh, or cry, or throw up everything he has ever eaten in his whole life. 

[“You’ve finally realised, then?” Natasha says when he sees her the next morning. 

He nods. She lets the matter drop.]

It should stop there: Clint Barton and the Great Romance that Never Was. But life is seldom that kind to Clint. 

It starts out as an innocent conversation amongst roommates, because of course Tony would insist on them all moving in. Clint can recognise the pattern – he’s been tempted by it too. Build a new family to replace the damaged one that blood had cursed you with. It’s the first time he’s actually given in to the temptation though, and it’s strange, both comfortable and uncomfortable at once, that he doesn’t know what to do with the sensation. He suspects Tony doesn’t either, and oddly that makes it easier, bearable somehow. 

So, Clint learns stillness in a new context. How to listen to the people he lives with, how to have a family meal where the only threat is of the world being invaded and he is safe from the fists of those closest to him. He doubts it will ever become second nature, but he’s learning tolerance, an uphill process that he works at like it’s an assignment. 

It doesn’t surprise him that it’s most difficult with Thor. Clint has never been much for forgiving or forgetting, and Thor isn’t Loki – is the other side of the coin to Loki – but it’s still the same coin, so it’s a daily challenge for Clint not to shrink from the living room or kitchen when he sees that Thor is there. 

He perseveres and it becomes easier. He sets himself challenges – sit next to Thor at dinner, go to the gym when he knows Thor will be there. And to be fair, he thinks Thor realises what he’s doing – he’s quieter around Clint than he is at other times, he avoids talking about his home or family. 

It’s a delicate dance, it takes effort and patience, but it does make them work better as a team. Clint can see how that helps everyone. Lines of strain around eyes ease, laughter comes a little easier, arguments start to be resolved by understanding, by evenings watching crappy action films, instead of hard looks and harder words. If this continues, Clint thinks one evening, there’s a chance that they might all evolve into functioning adults, and then where would the world be? 

Oddly, it’s Pepper who causes everything to come crashing down, or rather her sister who does something incomprehensible to Clint and chooses to have a baby, leading to Pepper surrounding herself with booties and books on child development in the quest to become the best auntie who was ever allowed to babysit unsupervised. 

Clint doesn’t get it. He keeps to the side-lines and watches – Bruce seems to have limitless reserves of patience to answer all Pepper’s questions, but Tony has a faint look of panic on his face, whilst Natasha shoots looks of thinly disguised hunger at Pepper whenever she thinks she’s unobserved. He’s so intrigued at the interplay of desire and fear that he almost doesn’t notice how Thor has withdrawn from the group. 

But almost isn’t the same as doesn’t, and Clint decides that this is something he should investigate. So he takes Thor out for a night of quaffing and karaoke, both things that Thor excels at, and it’s enough to break through the shell of reserve that he has started building around himself. 

They prolong the evening, lingering over the walk home, until they are standing in the park at the base of the tower, looking up at its sheer edifice. 

“They are like family,” Thor says, “and I love all of them, yet…”

“Babies,” Clint says. “I just don’t get ‘em.”

Thor nods. “I am an uncle.”

Clint blinks at him, because this is the first he had heard of it. “I thought you only had the one brother?”

Thor looks away. “I do. They are Loki’s children.”

Clint hears the words like they are ice down his spine. But this is Thor, the man who saved Clint’s life last Thursday, the man who sang the definitive karaoke version of Bohemian Rhapsody only an hour ago. Clint can’t turn his back on that just because he has a family. 

He looks up. Thor is watching him, his face gentle and worried, and that is enough to make Clint smile. 

“Tell me about them,” he says, and that seems to be all the invitation Thor needs. 

He talks at length, sounding at times like he’s a proud uncle, at others like he’s recounting an ancient saga. On some level, Clint supposes, he’s both. He tells Clint about Sleipnir, who can travel across worlds; of Jörmungandr the serpent, who holds a world in his coils; of Fenrir the wolf, who will devour existence one day; of Hel, the queen of the land of the dead. He talks like myths are real and reality a myth. He talks as if he still lives in a land of quests and heroes, where rules exist and worth can determine outcome. 

His words settle under Clint’s skin like an itch. There’s the shape of an idea in his mind, but like the taste of a missing word on his tongue, he cannot grasp it. It consumes him though, this idea-seed, so he sits up for hours after Thor has gone to bed, trying to make out the shapes of the few constellations still visible through the light pollution of the night sky. 

Phil would know, he thinks. Phil would see exactly what he is missing. But there is no Phil, not any more, and no one he can talk things through with; Clint is on his own with problems like this. That, finally, is what allows Clint to understand. 

“Loki,” he says, in an undertone, because he’s not sure about this and he feels a bit stupid. “Loki. Loki Laufeyson.” He pauses, feels the cold air on his face, wonders what he’s doing. “Come on, you bastard, you _owe_ me.”

“There is a school of thought,” Loki says from next to him, as if he’s always been there, “that would agree with you on that.” He rises from the cold concrete that Clint has perched on and stretches. “So, what is it that you think I owe you?”

“Phil,” Clint says, without a pause. “Phil Coulson.”

“Interesting.” Loki stares out at the horizon, his lips twisted in a smile as if he is the ringmaster surveying his domain. “And what makes you presume I can help you find the dead?” 

“Your daughter,” Clint says. “Hel. Ruler of the land of the dead. You can help me find her, then she can help me find Phil.”

Loki raises an eyebrow. “You have researched,” he says. “And there are many doors to my daughter’s realm.” He stoops, his face a breath from Clint’s own. “One of which lies at your feet right now.”

Clint looks down, at where the building drops away in a dizzying fall to the ground, fifty stories below. “No.” He shakes his head. “I won’t take that one. I don’t want to die – I want Phil back here.”

“And if it’s not worth your life,” Loki says, his lips brushing Clint’s ear as he speaks, “just what _are_ you willing to pay?”

“There’s a difference.” Clint pulls away, stands up. “Paying a price is not the same as throwing my life away.”

Loki smiles, a teacher watching a particularly stupid pupil learn a lesson. “It may end up costing you that in any case.”

Clint shrugs. “Then it does, but I won’t have wasted the only coin I have to pay with right at the start of my mission.”

Loki claps his hands. “Excellent. So you understand the rules then, mortal.” He leans in, inhales the scent of Clint’s neck. “Or you think you do in any case.” He straightens, and the smile on his lips does not reach his eyes. “So, I will help you, and I will get to watch the game, and all the debts I owe you will be erased. Do you agree to my terms?”

“Yes,” Clint says, forcing his voice to be even. “I agree to your terms.” 

“Good,” Loki says. “This time tomorrow, then. My aid to you will be here. Do not be late – I shall not offer help again.”

“Tomorrow?” Clint stares at him. “I thought you would help now?”

Loki pulls himself up to his full height. “Think you that I wait on your pleasure? Or that my plans can be put into play with no preparation? No. Besides,” he steps back and the aura of menace dissipates a little, “it will be amusing to see how you comport yourself with your teammates.” He flicks Clint’s chest with one finger. “Now that you know you might not return.” 

He is gone between one breath and the next, with nothing but the crawling skin on Clint’s back to attest to his presence. Clint waits, but aside from the noise of traffic that is omnipresent in New York, the night is undisturbed. Loki does not return.

\---

It probably is amusing to watch Clint the next day, and if Loki is watching Clint hopes he fucking chokes on it. 

He can’t settle to anything. He’s checked and rechecked his arrows a dozen times, treated his arm brace with oil to keep it supple. Hell, he’s even polished his boots. By the time there’s a call he’s ready to climb the walls and Natasha is frowning in his direction. 

“I’ll go,” he tells Steve, relieved when Steve nods. 

It’s not a huge thing – the villain of the day barely rates the name – but has somehow managed to release all the animals in the Central Park Zoo. It’s not normally the sort of thing the Avengers would be called in on, but there are rumours that men in capes were seen at the scene beforehand, and no one can work out how all the cages were opened at the same time. Also, it’s been quiet, and Tony has a theory that the powers that be don’t like the Avengers to be left too long between jobs (there’s some justification in this. It’s mostly Thor) so Clint arms himself with tranq darts and goes _huntin’ wabbits_ while Tony pulls a bored face and rounds up the so-called mastermind. 

It’s relaxing. There’s no threat, so to speak, but some of the animals are a challenge to take down – the snow leopards are a particularly fun twenty minutes – so Clint lets go and enjoys himself. He’s doing good, and he’s doing what he loves, and he fires arrow after arrow at interesting targets, letting them slumber peacefully until the keepers collect them and deliver them back to their cages, while the sun warms his back. 

It’s a good day, and he’s in a good mood, pleasantly aching but happy, when he gets back to the tower. He lets himself enjoy dinner, aware with every mouthful that this is probably the last time he’ll get to sit down with this family. He’s oddly sanguine about it – having a family he could trust and love was something he had never imagined he could have, so every second he has had are an unexpected blessing. He’s not greedy, he’s never been greedy. He won’t cling onto things he blatantly obviously doesn’t deserve. 

His good mood is enough to quell Natasha’s sour looks – or maybe she’s deciphered what he’s up to. In either case, she takes a step back, and he’s grateful for that too. He spends time with each of them, not too much, nothing that will make them suspicious, but enough that they’ll have something they can remember if this all goes wrong. 

Even this makes him happy. He’s not had a chance to actually say goodbye before. Not to his parents, or Barney, or Phil. He’s blinked and they vanished, that’s how it’s always been, so actually having the chance to say goodbye – even if no one else realises what he’s doing – is something precious. 

By the time he makes it to the roof, he’s content with what he’s done. Overall, he would prefer to live, but if that’s the price that Clint will have to pay to restore Coulson to the world? Well. He’s ready for it now. 

He expects Loki to be there when he opens the door, but he isn’t. As the minutes pass by and the cold starts to settle into his bones, Clint wonders if he’s been set up. He wonders a lot of things as the minutes fade into hours, not least of which is whether Tasha would have waited with him if he’d asked. But in the end, just as night turns to morning, he hears the sound of hooves on the roof behind him. 

Sleipnir is beautiful. A white hole in the aching void of the world, and Clint, well, he’s ridden horses before, a long time ago at the circus admittedly, but he knows what he’s doing now. Maybe Sleipnir talks – he’s no normal horse after all – but Clint is beyond words so they travel in silence. 

It’s difficult to tell, time can only be measured by the steady beat of the horse’s hooves, but the sky lightens and darkens nine times while Clint is astride Sleipnir’s back and he is fairly sure that the journey takes nine days. In a way, though, it could be minutes or it could be endless. It doesn’t seem to matter how light or dark the skies are, he cannot see anything. He only has the sense of rising and falling that gives him the impression he’s travelling through valleys and over mountains. 

He wonders, idly, without any real urgency to the thought, if he will be blind when he gets there. If his sight will be the price he has to pay. It’s worth it, he thinks as the horse’s hooves fall, worth it if Phil has a second chance. Every step drives home that this is his purpose, this quest, and he mourns what he has had, even as he accepts that he can expect nothing more. 

When he sees something glimmering in the distance, he thinks that it’s an optical illusion. He’s got used to illusions over the last nine days, the silence and darkness has taught them to him, and the gold in the distance? He accepts it as easily as he did the sight of his parents, or Natasha’s voice. 

It’s only when he draws closer that he realises it’s real. A covered bridge, like something from Madison County, only roofed in gold and shining beyond anything he can expect. 

For the first time, Sleipnir slows his pace, and Clint realises that this is something significant. 

There’s a woman there, guarding the bridge. A maiden Clint thinks, remembering the books in the orphanage library when he was a kid, before he remembers Natasha’s opinions on equality and the importance of labels. 

“Halt,” she says, and though her voice shakes, the point of her sword doesn’t. “Who goes there? And what is your purpose in these realms?”

Sleipnir clatters to a halt. 

“My name is Clint Barton,” he shouts, summoning courage he’d never guessed he had. “And I seek admission to Hel’s realm.” 

“You live.” Her voice is rough, like nails drawn across a blackboard. “What business do you have here?”

“I seek the man I love,” Clint replies, though the night swallows his words. “And I will not turn back.”

She sheathes her sword and stares at him.

“I know not the truth of your words,” she says, “but should you truly seek Hel’s realm, then it lies downwards and northwards.”

He nods, and Sleipnir walks past her, the sound of his hooves echoing off the closed roof. 

The road divides past the bridge, one path leading upwards to the east, the other downwards to the north. Clint follows the latter, though he will accept that this decision is primarily Sleipnir’s. At length he sees a giant wall in the distance. 

There’s a noise as well, faint at first, but growing as they approach the wall, a shrill, desperate wail that speaks without words of loss and despair. It resonates inside Clint’s chest, striking a chord with his own unuttered mourning for Phil. It should turn his stomach, he thinks, or drive him back from this place. Instead he feels only a sense of kinship. 

He loses himself in the cadence of the wail. It’s amplified by the movement of the horse, a waveform that builds inside his mind and body and it is only with the crash after the crescendo that he realises that Sleipnir has leapt the wall and that they are finally inside Hel’s mansion. 

He slips from Sleipnir’s back, steadies himself against the broad white expanse of his flank. After so many days riding, Clint cannot get his balance, his legs feel as weak as a new-born’s. Sleipnir is warm and solid against him, and Clint is overwhelmed with gratitude. As hard as the journey has been for him, he cannot imagine the price that Sleipnir has paid. He staggers forward, legs gaining strength with ever step, until he can rest his forehead against the horse’s. 

“Thank you,” he says, his voice rough with disuse. “I know you brought me here because Loki requested it, but…” he tightens his fingers in Sleipnir’s mane, “but I am grateful, and I would return the favour one day, if I may.”

He turns then, and walks towards the doors of the hall, the weight of Sleipnir’s regard a comforting presence between his shoulder blades. He is not alone in this strange land, he reminds himself, and there is a purpose to his quest. 

The thought drives him forward, until he is standing at the doors to the hall. The lintel is the colour of old bone, is old bone he realises with a shiver, but his choices are limited, and there is only one his heart _can_ make, so he raises his right hand and knocks. 

It makes a startling noise, one that echoes, and Clint hears shuffling footsteps from behind the door, the slow drag of bolts being undone, and, finally, the creak of the door as it opens. 

The creature on the other side is a pitiful thing, twisted by age, distorted by illness, but Clint clamps his reaction down, lets nothing show on his face. 

“I am here to seek Lady Hel,” he says, and his voice seems to make some of the shadows behind the creature recoil. “Will you take me to her?”

The creature grunts, and turns, beckoning Clint enter. He does, pushing past the creature. It smells of dryness, of time-forgotten rooms, of the brittle things left after decay, and Clint forces himself to smile at it. It grunts again, pushes the door closed, and shuffles past Clint making painfully slow progress deeper into the hall. Clint follows, two steps behind, even when they pass from flag-stoned hallways into a rush strewn chamber. 

He blinks. He can sense the space around him, and it feels impossibly huge. Lights glimmer like constellations in the distance, giving distance to the darkness, but not illuminating it. 

Ahead of them is a rough wooden throne, and on it a slim, dark haired figure. It takes a moment for Clint to realise that it is not Loki, but as they draw closer he sees that the likeness is superficial. She has the same imperious tilt to her head, and her hair falls in the same dark curls that Loki had on the rooftop, softer than they had been during the Battle of New York. Her skin is as pale as Loki’s, and it seems to shine in the darkness of the hall, the only real thing Clint can see. 

He focuses on her, keeping his head high, ignoring the whispering sounds that populate the shadows on either side of him. She is seated near a fire, and as he reaches the edge of its light he notices three things. That the skin on the right side of her face is as pale and pure as the bone that shows on the left side; that she has a giant wolf curled around her ankles, growling at Clint’s intrusion; that Phil is seated on a low three-legged stool to her right. 

The sight of Phil drives everything else from his mind, and he steps forward, his right hand outstretched and Phil’s name on his lips. 

The movement rouses the wolf. It rises from the place at Hel’s feet and takes Clint’s hand in his mouth, pulling him back a step. Clint can feel the power in the wolf’s great jaws, but his grip is gentle and his teeth do not even break Clint’s skin. Still though, Clint cannot drag his eyes from Phil. 

“He does not hear you,” Hel says, and her voice is a rich contrast with the ruin of her face. “He is not truly one of my subjects.” She brings her hand to rest on Phil’s head. “He died in battle, which means he should, by rights, be in Valhalla, but my father’s reach is long and his influence extends through all the nine realms when he chooses to exert it.” 

Clint hesitates, but her words seem true. Phil does not acknowledge him, does not acknowledge anything. He is staring into the middle distance, a puzzled smile on his lips, and this, more than anything that Clint has seen, makes him scared. 

“Lady,” he says, dropping to his knees, his arm still pinned by the wolf. “If your father has arranged for this, then you will know why I am here.” He looks up. Her eyes are mismatched – the right one is as green as Loki’s but the left one burns like fire, and he knows he cannot lie to her. “I come to crave a boon.”

“What is it you wish?” she asks, and Clint swallows down everything he might have said. He is part of a story now, a myth, and there are rules to be obeyed in this place. 

“Release Phil,” he says. “Allow him to return to Midgard and resume his life.” 

She ponders his words, tips Phil’s face up so she can examine it, as if it holds some secret she can read if she finds the right angle. 

“Why?” she says at length. “What value does he hold that you seek this favour?”

“He does not belong here,” Clint says. “You said so. He doesn’t belong in Hel, and he doesn’t belong among the dead.” He swallows. “He would never have died if Loki hadn’t tried to invade the Earth.”

She stares at him, impassive, and Clint knows that although this is _a_ truth, it is not the truth she seeks. 

“The world needs him,” he says. “There is nobody like him, anywhere on Earth, and they need him. _We_ need him.” He looks at her again and summons all his strength to put into words why he has shied from until now. “And because I love him. I love him and I let Loki kill him. It’s my fault and I should have been the one to die, not him.” The last word is nearly a sob, but he doesn’t break eye contact. “This was never meant to happen,” he tells her. “Not to him. Not like this.”

She nods. “There is some truth to your words. He is not meant to be here, and our father has acknowledged his role in what happened.” She releases Phil’s head, leans forward slightly. “There is a debt involved, and an injustice. Restoring him to his life would remedy this.” She runs her tongue over her lips and across the bleached bone of her other-face. “But I can taste your desire from here, and it is not a selfless thing that you ask. So tell me, Clint Barton, what is the price you would willingly pay for me to grant your wish?”

He is prepared for the question, has known that it is inevitable right from the start of this quest. “Whatever my lady wills,” he says holding her gaze, letting the fire of her stare flay all the lies and untruths away until she can see his soul. 

“Granted,” she says, and that is all the warning he gets before the wolf tightens his jaws and Clint’s world is reduced to crushing pain. 

He can see, through a haze of red, as the wolf withdraws, lays his prize on her knee. How the fingers of his hand are twitching as she laces them in hers, and even removed as it is from his body, he can feel her touch. 

“Walk out of here,” she says. “Walk out and do not look back. If you look back, all bargains will become as nothing.” 

“Sleipnir,” he says, panting with the pain and shock, but she laughs.

“No. The path you must walk is not the one he treads. There is a different way that wraps around the root of the World Tree and you must walk it yourself.” 

He staggers to his feet and leaves the hall. The whispers around him are louder now, he can hear fragments of conversation, but he does not waver. 

He makes his way to the door, struggles one handed with the bolts, his grip made slick with the blood from his injured arm. Every second he expects to feel the wolf’s teeth again, on his neck or his back, but he gets the door open at length and almost falls outside.

There is no sign of Sleipnir, not that he expected to find such an easy escape after her words, and he hunts until he finds a narrow path at the back of the hall. It winds up a hill, out of the range of his sight, and he steels himself before he starts walking it. 

It’s hard for him not to look back, but as he walks and the path unrolls before him, he learns what true hardship really is. 

The path is steep, and dizzy with pain and blood-loss he makes only slow going. It’s not meant to be like this, he thinks. He knows – knew – has always known that the hero must pay a price, but he didn’t know it would hurt like this. The loss of his limb, the loss of who he is and was and could be, that was meant to be enough. It was meant to be a clean wound, not something scabbed and bloody, with the bone of his arm poking through the mess of sinew and skin. 

He doesn’t look back though – can’t. There are no second guesses here, and he does not begrudge the price if it brings Phil back. Still, it hurts, and he can still feel Hel’s touch – the slither of soft hair over a palm that isn’t there, the warmth of fingers cradling his own. He staggers on, fighting the sensation, ignoring the susurrus of sound to either side of the path, the sucking silence behind him where there should be footsteps. 

He is sobbing as he walks, sobbing or talking to Phil or praying to a God that, if it exists, would never cast its eyes down to this dismal place. There is nothing in him, nothing at all that he can hold back, and words and cries tumble from his lips in a humiliating, unstoppable flood. 

Just once, he sees someone, his brother, looking lost and confused at the edge of the path, but Clint has been expecting this and looks away. Not quickly enough though. He never saw Barney cry when he was alive, and he wishes he hadn’t seen it now. 

And still the path climbs on and Clint climbs with it, unsteady on his feet, hurting and heart-sore, half convinced that Loki will be waiting at the end of it to tell him that it was a fool’s errand. But he is determined to see this to the bitter end, and with every footfall that feeling grows until Clint cannot remember anything else, has no space in him for anything else. 

It’s this that makes him continue when the path comes to an end, when Clint’s head bumps a ceiling of earth. It’s this that helps him scrabble and claw his way through, trying to excavate a tunnel through which Phil can follow him, hampered by the terrible aching pain but fighting on until he manages to break through, and there is light and the wind on his face and Natasha, pale and frightened, looking at him like he is a monster. 

“I did it,” he says to her. “I’m back.” And he sees the way her eyes widen as she looks over his shoulder. She pushes past him, and Clint sinks to the ground, looks at his arm. It’s still bleeding and Clint thinks, dizzy with blood loss, that surely this is meant to have healed, like the whole thing was a dream. 

Instead it is all too real, but the team are there, and Phil says “Would someone mind telling me what just happened?” and Clint can only smile as he succumbs to the good drugs that the fraught med-team force on him. 

When he wakes up, he’s in a hospital, the stump of his arm is bandaged, and Tony is sitting next to the bed, his attention on the screen of his StarkPad. 

“You pulled the short straw?” Clint’s voice is hoarse and his tongue is cracked and painful. “Don’t you normally fix those things?”

It startles Tony, and the ensuing confusion lasts several minutes while nurses come in and Clint is raised in bed, and he’s finally allowed a couple of sips of water. 

“We didn’t draw straws,” Tony says when everything has calmed down. “We’ve been taking it in shifts so that one of us is always here, just in case you woke up and there wasn’t anyone to tell you what a colossal ass you were to go off and try to do this on your own.” He glares at Clint. “Seriously, Barton. I thought we were beyond this sort of stunt.” 

“First,” Clint says, poking at the straw until he can take another sip of water. “That is so fucking rich coming from you, Stark. I mean, there isn’t enough irony in the whole world to cover what you just said. Second, I didn’t _try_ to do this on my own, I _did_ it, unless I was hallucinating at the end there.” He pauses, feels panic rise up in his chest.

“No.” Tony puts his hand on Clint’s arm, touching the bandage. “No, Clint. You did it. You got Coulson back.” 

Clint swallows, closes his eyes for a second. Tony squeeze his arm, and it’s something Clint has always liked about Stark, that he never once backs away from acknowledging the hurts other people carry around with them. Clint knows he will have more than his share of pitying looks and darted glances to come, as if deformity is something shameful, or contagious, but the warmth of Tony’s hand here and now reminds him that it isn’t. (And below that, below where the bandage ends, Clint can feel cold fingers stroking the curve of his wrist.)

“Yeah,” he says, forcing his eyes open, forcing himself not to think about anything but the here and now. “So, I did it myself, because it was a one-man job.” He looks at Tony, smiles. “Not because I didn’t want you there.” 

Tony nods. “I’d have helped,” he says. “I care about Agent, too. We all do.” 

“I know.” Clint is suddenly tired. “But you couldn’t help. Loki owed me, not the rest of you, and it would have ruined his fun if I’d had backup. Besides,” he raises the stump of his arm. “This way the rest of you still have all your powers.” 

“About that.” Tony flips round his StarkPad. “I’ve taken some measurements, and been designing you a replacement arm. So, you’re still on the team, Bow Boy.”

“Cool,” Clint says, because he’s not going to turn down some top-of-the-range Stark-tech. He knows he won’t shoot again – that was implied in the price he said he’d pay – but he doesn’t think Hel would begrudge him something he can use as a tool to rebuild his life and it makes Tony happy for now. 

He’s given the good drugs, so he zones in and out of coherence over the next few days. He sees the rest of the team like they are flashes in a dream and tucks away images of them: Tasha brushing the hair back from his brow and kissing his forehead, Thor apologising until Clint tells him that he can make his own choices, and shut up, Thor, I forgive you already. Bruce is there with Tony, measuring his arm, talking about composites and mechanisms while Clint hovers between waking and sleeping, Steve watching them with baffled fondness on his face. Even Fury appears, looming up like something from the darkness beside the path, nodding once, leaving. Clint captures the images, locks them away safe. He’ll need them, he thinks, to be strong. Later. 

It takes a while for the exhaustion to recede, but he eventually wakes up and feels something like his self again. 

“Learnt your lesson yet?” Phil says, passing him a cup of water, and yeah. It really isn’t a surprise that Phil is here for this. 

Clint drinks the water, and the next cup before Phil pulls the jug away.

“Steady,” he says. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

Clint nods, and fidgets with the edge of the sheet while Phil pulls a chair around. He’s never seen Phil lost for words before, but this Phil, who takes his time positioning the chair and settling himself in it, is someone slightly new to Clint, and it makes Clint uneasy. 

“So,” Phil says when the chair is perfectly positioned, casual enough so it obviously isn’t an interrogation, but in the right place so he can still see every expression on Clint’s face. “What actually happened, Barton?” He looks at Clint, smaller than Clint ever imagined he could be. “Thor said something about Loki and his children, but…” He scratches his head. “It’s like a dream. I remember Loki and the helicarrier, but then everything is hazy until I woke up and you were digging us out of somewhere.” 

“You got lost,” Clint says, reaching out his good hand and touching Phil’s arm. “You got lost, and I worked out how to find you, sir. Just like all the times you found me.” 

“You went on your own?” Phil said, and Clint nods. 

“Not something I could bring the others in on.” 

“But your arm,” Phil says, and his voice sounds wretched. 

“Accidents happen, sir.” Clint smiles at him. “Especially when you don’t have backup.” For a second, Phil looks like he will argue, and Clint tightens his grip on Phil’s arm. “It was a bit of a clusterfuck,” he says, in the old familiar tone he used to use on post-debrief conversations. “But this isn’t the worst outcome.” He lets Phil see how earnest he is. “Tony’s already got a prototype of a new arm for me, and I can work round this.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” Phil says, a mulish look in his eyes. “You…” he glances away. “The team need you.”

“And they have me,” Clint says. “And this way they have you as well.”

Phil looks at him closely, and Clint lies still and thinks honest thoughts. He can almost see Phil rebuilding himself, taking Clint’s flimsy excuse at its word, and getting ready to move on with his life. 

“Okay, Barton,” Phil says, eventually. “We’ll talk about this again later, because you’re not telling me everything, I know that for sure.” He stands up. “Right now, just concentrate on recovering. I expect to see you back on duty within the month. Understand, Specialist?” 

“Yes, sir,” Clint says, sketching a salute with his left hand. “Understood.” 

Phil nods, and turns to go. He pauses by the door though, looks back. 

“Thank you,” he says. “Whatever you did, Clint. Thank you.”

Clint nods, but Phil is already gone. 

“Good lord,” Tony says when he pops in later to give Clint an arm fitting. “What happened to you? You look _terrible_.”

“I think,” Clint says, wincing a little as Tony starts to undo the bandages, “that I need to get outta here for a bit.”

“Ah.” Tony keeps unwinding the bandages, steady and careful. “Running from your emotions. I get that one, Captain Hook.” He puts the bandages to one side and starts fiddling with the prosthetic he brought with him. “You wanna use my place in Malibu for a few weeks? Or are we talking more permanent here?”

“More permanent,” Clint says, and Tony nods.

“Thought it might be.” Tony’s hands are very gentle as he straps the arm to Clint’s stump. “You gonna tell Agent why you’re going?”

“Nah.” Clint shrugs. “It’ll just make everything complicated, besides…” he waves his arm at Tony, the metal hand flopping uselessly at the end of it. “He shouldn’t have to settle.” 

“He wouldn’t see it as settling,” Tony says, starting to run wires up Clint’s arm. “And don’t you think he deserves the courtesy of being allowed to choose?” He pauses when he sees the expression on Clint’s face. “Or not. You need to do what’s right for you.” He slips a cap of wires over Clint’s head, starts clipping the arm wires to them. “Of course, if you’ve got involved in mythic shit then you’re the only who can decide, aren’t you?” He grins at Clint. “Normal rules cease to apply and all that.” Clint nods, unable to trust his voice. “Try and move your fingers, would you?”

Clint does, and Tony laughs so long and loud that the nurses rush in to see what the problem is. 

 

Fury is oddly compliant when Clint makes the request. Sure, he keeps flashing Clint a shitty “I know something you don’t” look and he tells Clint that he knows he’ll be back, but he grants Clint an honourable discharge anyway. Of all the unlikely things that have happened to Clint over the last few months, this is the most absurd. He has never, not once in his wildest dreams, thought he would ever get an honourable discharge. Mostly, he’s never thought he would get out alive at all. 

Phil withdraws slightly when he finds out – he’s less likely to seek Clint out, more likely to observe Clint from a distance, a hurt look on his face – but the rest of the team understands, even if they all seem to assume that he just needs time to adjust. That he will be back. 

Even Phil unbends eventually, and he’s there at the shindig that Fury arranges to mark the event, and gets riotously, hilariously drunk at the after-party party. 

He ends up on a table, giving a speech about Clint, while the team and selected SHIELD-folk bang the table and heckle him. He tells them all how Clint has evolved from the young scrap of fight that he had cornered in an alley and had had to shoot to keep from making everything exponentially worse. He talks about Clint’s honour and ingenuity, and how he has every expectation that he will make a success of the rest of his life. 

“You could stay,” Tony says to Clint when Phil is done, low-key for once in his life, and Clint just stares at him. “Tactical mind like yours, SI can use that even if SHIELD can’t.” 

He doesn’t look convinced by his words though, and Clint isn’t sure whether that’s because he’s not sure whether he can employ someone without their high-school GED, or if it’s because he knows how hollowly his words will ring to Clint. 

Clint doesn’t care which it is. 

\---

He’s trained for this, trained by SHIELD and the army – and the circus and a childhood of abuse, and it’s easy enough to slip through the cracks, set enough false trails until he knows that no-one will be able to find him. It’s almost a relief to be there, back where he was destined to end up. A studio apartment. A fake name. A job in a bar where he pulls pints, sorts out drunks who talk bigger than they fight, and gets paid cash in… hand. 

It’s unremarkable, boring. Safe. It’s the life he was meant to have. 

Sometimes, after his shift, when it’s dark and sleep is elusive, he watches the news. Lets himself see what the team is up to now. Smiles a bit when he sees them looking good. Coulson is the spook’s spook, but still, Clint’s eyes are sharp and he knows where to look so sometimes he sees him: the flash of a dark suit at the perimeter of an ‘event’. He’s better, Clint sees. Still not moving with his old ease, but better than he was. Clint wonders if he can sleep, wherever he is now. If his subconscious remembers even if his conscious mind doesn’t. If he misses Clint. If he even remembers that Clint existed. 

Thinking like that does no good, just leads to Clint running through the pre-dawn streets, trying to tire his body on the off-chance it will make his brain shut up. He used to be able to shoot moods like this away, but even with the hand Tony made him, he can’t shoot any more. Can’t and isn’t sure if that is _properly_ can’t, or just won’t. So there’s running, and staring at the cracks in the ceiling, and work. There’s thinking about obligation, and prices, and value. There’s meals for one, a phone that never rings, the nagging fear in the back of his mind that he’s forgotten what his voice sounds like. Rinse, repeat, face another day. 

He gets drunk once. It’s a shit-storm that ends up with his nose broken and his knuckles bruised. He’s far enough gone that he buys a burn cell phone and calls Natasha, just to hear her voicemail message. 

He’s horrified in the morning. Drives two states over and destroys the sim and the cell, dumping them in a lake before slinking home. He holes up for a week after, surviving on the tinned rations he stockpiles in the small kitchen, until he realises that no-one has come looking for him, that they probably wouldn’t, even if they’d realised that he’d been the one who called. 

He doesn’t drink again, and takes up meditation in case it can help him to stop stupid trains of thought like this before they wreck the life he’s so carefully chosen for himself. 

It’s an honest surprise the first time someone chats him up in the bar. Clint doesn’t deal with it well. He manages better the second time it happens, and soon enough (the nineteenth time. Seven months after his new life has begun) he says yes, and goes on a proper date for the first time in his life. 

It’s not a successful evening. Clint doesn’t know the conventions of how things like this go, but it feels strained, even to him, and he’s not surprised when it ends with a kiss on his cheek and a patently untrue promise to text. 

Still, it’s progress, Clint thinks. Another step towards having a normal life, and the next one will go better. Maybe he’ll buy a TV next. Normal people all own one of those, he’s sure. 

He’s still thinking about that (should he get a TV stand? He saw one once when he was part of an assassination team taking out a sleeper in Iowa, but is it a step too far? There’d been doilies. Would he need those too?) as he opens the door to his apartment. 

“Ptenchik,” Natasha says, looking like a serene yogi seated cross-legged on his bed. “Have you finally decided to take your head from out of your ass, or am I going to have to beat you again?”

“Tasha.” His voice grates in his ears. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

She looks at him for a second, inscrutably lovely like he remembers, even with her face twisted into a scowl. 

“You vanished,” she says. “You got Coulson back, you acted like the wronged lover in some Victorian melodrama, and you vanished.” Her brows draw together. “I thought you needed space to brood, that you would be back, but no. That isn’t your plan, is it? You vanished.” Her jaw works for a second, the biggest tell that Clint has ever seen from her. “You vanished and you _left me behind_.”

“Tash,” he says, gesturing, one good hand – one something… other. “I couldn’t stay. I thought you knew that. C’mon.” He sits next to her, strokes her hair away from her face so he can see her eyes. “You knew I was going to go. After…” He swallows, trying to dislodge the lump in his throat, the cotton in his mouth. “After Hel… you knew I couldn’t stay.”

“I knew no such thing.” Her voice, calm and aloof, with barely the hint of a shake to it, does not betray her feelings. 

“Tash.” He nudges her with his shoulder. “You know what we said about lies.”

He watches the line of her throat as she swallows, marvelling at her, like he always has, before she turns her eyes on him. 

“I know what we said, Clint. But you never said what happened. You went in to save him, and he came back, and you came back,” she takes hold of his arm just where it ends. Where his hand was. Between where he can feel and where he imagines he can feel. “And then you went, and you never said anything.”

“I had to,” he says, pinned to the truth by her touch. “I had to do it. And I’d do it again.” He draws a ragged breath and looks at her. “There was… is… a price to pay.” He wants to look away, and he _can’t_. “I chose the path I walked, Tash. I chose it freely. I can’t quibble about the cost now.” 

He looks down and can feel the weight of her regard. 

“It was worth it?” she asks, and her voice is soft even as her fingers tighten around the stump of his arm. 

“It is worth it.” He blinks against the way the room has blurred. He needs to make her understand, so he looks at her, and bares himself, knowing she will see. “I knew what the risk was – I knew what she was asking for – and I chose that. You think I was doing that for me?” The walls feel close now, and it takes a lot, it takes everything to continue. “You think I went though _that_ for some happily ever after I don’t deserve?”

“No.” She sounds resigned now. “But I didn’t think it was a forever thing.”

He laughs, and it sounds broken and rusty even to him. “Jesus, Tash. Of course it’s a forever thing.” He looks her bang in the eye, even though he knows his eyes are rimmed red. “What other price would be worth the purchase?” 

And even though she punches him, and calls him a dick, she stays the night, holding him like she will never let him go. 

She does go, not the next day, nor the day after, but soon enough, and Clint is faced with a dilemma. If he stays here, he knows that the others will find him, one after another. But he is tired of running, from them and from himself, so he resists the initial impulse and braces himself. 

He’s expecting Tony or Thor, secretly hoping it will be Phil, so it’s a shock when Steve turns up in the bar, wearing a motorcycle jacket and pulling off his aviator sunglasses and he ducks through the door. 

“Cap,” Clint says, wiping down the bar. “What can I get you?”

“A beer,” Steve says, sitting on the barstool nearest Clint. “And one for yourself if you’ve got the time.”

Clint does, so he pours the two beers. It’s quiet – Tuesday afternoons only attract the most hardened drinkers, and there are only a couple of those in today. 

“How are they all?” Clint asks, and Steve shrugs.

“Getting on,” he says. “I know you saw Natasha the other week, but you should give Tony a call.” Steve gestures with his beer at Clint’s arm. “He’d like to know how you’re getting on with the arm.” 

“Eh.” Clint moves his beer around. “He’ll be okay. It’s Stark.”

Steve frowns at his drink. “That’s not right,” he says. “He takes the team’s welfare, our welfare, personally, you know? Especially with tech.” He stares at Clint. “You’re underestimating him.”

“I guess I am.” Clint can’t meet Steve’s eyes. “He knows I’m grateful though.”

“Maybe.” Steve takes a long pull on his drink. “I’m not sure there’s ever enough reassurance for Tony.”

“Families.” Clint clinks his glass with Steve. “They fuck you over coming and going.”

They drink in silence for a bit, until the silence gets too much for Clint to handle. “How’s the rest of the team?” he asks.

Steve shrugs. “You’d know if you bothered to keep in touch,” he says, fixing Clint with a hard look. “You hurt Phil, though.”

That startles a laugh from Clint. “I didn’t,” he says. “I _couldn’t_.” He takes a drink, swallows. “It would take a better man than me to hurt Phil.”

The good humour fades from Steve’s face. “Think about what you just said,” he says. “And tell me you’re not ashamed of yourself.” 

Clint can’t. He busies himself with cleaning until Steve sighs. 

“Look.” Steve rests his hand on Clint’s shoulder, stilling him. “I get that you’re hurting, really, I do, but you gotta see that vanishing like you did hurt Phil.”

“I didn’t vanish.” Clint winces at how petulant his voice sounds. “I told everyone I was going…”

“And then you vanished,” Steve finishes for him. “We understand you need time, Clint, of course you do, but you cut us all out, and that hurt.” He raises his glass, tips it towards Clint. “It hurt Phil most, cuz he thought you trusted him.”

“I do.” The words are out before Clint can consider them. “It’s not that. It was never that.”

Steve shrugs. “In that case,” he says. “You need to come home. Tell him that yourself.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Really?” Steve looks unimpressed. “Why not?” Clint doesn’t have an answer, and Steve, bless him, lets the moment pass. “It can be as easy as you let it, Clint. But promise me, you’ll consider it at least.”

Clint nods, embarrassed by Steve’s earnestness. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll try.”

Steve nods. “That’s all I ask.” 

And Clint is true to his word. He does think about it. Not straight away, of course, because Steve hangs round overnight, and they sit up till the early hours talking about the howling commandos and Steve’s cross country road trip and how those two things might not be totally unlinked. 

“I’ll be back in a few months,” Steve says in the morning, when they’ve had too little sleep and there are too many feelings. “On my way home.” He stares at Clint. “I’ll drop in, if you’re still here.”

Clint shrugs, makes a non-committal noise. He’s already fairly sure that he’ll be back in New York by then – there’s only so far he can run after all, and he would rather not have to. 

But still, it takes him a couple of days after Steve leaves to pull out his cell. 

_I’m sorry_ , he texts Phil, recalling the number perfectly from memory. _I’ve been a dick. Can we talk?_

There isn’t a reply, and Clint tells himself he didn’t expect one. But the next night when he leaves work after a late shift, Phil is there, in the car park, leaning against Lola. 

“Hey,” he says, from the edge of the wash of the bar’s lights. “It’s Lola. I’m honoured.”

Phil raises an eyebrow. “I figured I was entitled to a treat,” he says. “This seemed as good an excuse as any.”

His tone is quelling but then Clint remembers, Phil has travelled all this way because Clint sent one text, and it makes him hope again. 

“How have you been, sir?” he asks, trying (and probably failing) to keep his tone light. 

“Well enough.” Phil glances at him. “I had trouble settling to begin with, but someone had torn a gaping great hole in the team, so I had to get on with it.”

He sounds angry, and it makes Clint pause. “I didn’t realise it would have that effect,” he says. “I didn’t mean that.”

“No, well, that’s always been your problem, hasn’t it, Clint?” Phil is angrier than Clint has ever heard him, and he stares at his hands one silver the other flesh, unable to meet his eyes. “You always underestimate yourself and think you’re the one who can be removed from the board. It doesn’t matter how many times we told you – I told you – that you were important.”

Clint shrugs, because he can’t find the words to argue this. Phil is right and wrong at the same time. Clint has always thought he’s the most expendable of any team because he _is_. Everyone else has a special skill, or a superpower. Clint has his aim, and a handful of glib words, and now, even those have deserted him. 

“But why should you care?” Phil is almost shouting now. “You drag me back from god knows where, feed me some bullshit story about being lost, and then vanish. You made it perfectly clear how little you cared about me – that you blamed me for your hand.”

“Bullshit.” 

Clint is on his feet staring Phil dead in the eye before he even realises it. 

“With all due respect, sir, but that is bullshit.”

“Really?” Phil curls his lip. “Then what’s _your_ explanation, Specialist?”

“You think I care about this?” Clint waves his StarkTech arm in Phil’s face. “I would give this ten times, a thousand times, to get you back and I wouldn’t care at all.”

Phil narrows his eyes. “So why did you vanish?” he asks. 

“Because that wasn’t all I gave,” Clint spits. Fuck it. If Coulson wants the truth so badly he can have it. “Because she wouldn’t have taken my hand and left my aim. And because I am useless to SHEILD, to the Avengers, to _you_ without it.”

It’s the first time he’s said it out loud and he doesn’t know what he expects, but whatever it is, it isn’t for Phil to punch him. 

“How dare you?” Phil says, his eyes narrow and his mouth pinched with fury. “How _dare_ you say that.”

“What?” Clint puffs himself up like his world hasn’t cracked open, like his face isn’t burning, like he can’t hear Loki’s laughter bouncing off the inside of his skull. “Like I’ve ever been anything more than a jumped up guttersnipe at SHEILD. They tolerate me, _sir_ , because you tell them to, and because my aim made it worthwhile to do so.”

He’s braced this time when Phil launches himself, wrapping his fists in Clint’s t-shirt and ramming him into the wall. And then he kisses Clint, and it’s as violent as the punch, leaves Clint reeling. 

“You,” he says, his face close enough that the words blow across Clint’s skin, “have _never_ been a guttersnipe, and the only person who has ever, _ever_ , thought that has been you. You have one of the best strategic minds of anyone I know. You think we’d have managed Prague without you? Sierra Leone? _Budapest_?” He runs his hands across Clint’s chest, grips his shoulders. “Idiot.” He looks fonder now though, and some of the heat has leached from his voice. “What did Loki say? What did Hel say?”

“That there would be a price.” Clint doesn’t want to say this much, but there seems to be no hope of concealment now. 

“And did they say what that was?” Phil asks. 

“No.” Clint shakes his head. “But I knew – my hand wouldn’t be enough. They know I have Tony, that he’d find me a way around that.”

“So you thought you would decide the price for yourself, did you?” Phil stares at him, and yeah. When Phil says it out loud, it does kinda sound dumb. 

Clint nods his head, suddenly uncertain. 

“Fuck this shit.” Phil squares his jaw and pulls out his gun. “Go on,” he says, passing it butt first to Clint. “Enough of this.” 

He kisses Clint again, only just less violent than the first time, and strides across to Lola. He flings the door open and rummages in the passenger seat, emerging with an apple in his hand.

“I knew I had one,” he says. “Natasha will not leave the health kick alone.”

He tosses it in the air, catches it, and, with his back away from Lola, puts the apple on his head. 

“Go on,” he says. “Shoot the fucking thing.”

“I can’t,” Clint says, but he has already raised his arm, is taking aim down the barrel of the gun. 

“Well, fuck you,” Phil spits. “I’m giving you an order, Specialist. Shoot.”

He meets Clint’s eye unflinchingly. “The man I love,” he says, “is no coward.”

And Clint… takes a second, centres himself, and fires.


End file.
